


i've got a cure for your crimes

by a_gay_poster



Category: Naruto
Genre: Blank Period (Naruto), First Time, Frottage, Guilt, Hand Jobs, M/M, Scars, Self-Esteem Issues, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:54:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27369847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_gay_poster/pseuds/a_gay_poster
Summary: “You forgot your pajamas,” Gaara guesses, unable to tear his eyes away from Lee’s exposed chest.“What?” Lee looks down at himself. “No, I normally just sleep in my boxers.”Gaara’s pulse is hammering somewhere up in his throat. There’s a noise in his ears, harsh and loud, that he doesn’t yet recognize as his own breathing.“Your … underwear.”When the power goes out at Gaara's Konoha hotel, Lee offers his room for the night. The fact that there's only one bed is but the first of Gaara's problems.
Relationships: Gaara/Rock Lee
Comments: 36
Kudos: 421





	i've got a cure for your crimes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a smut prompt fill on Tumblr. The prompt was: Could you do a prompt to do with Lee’s injuries and Gaara’s overwhelming guilt about it? 
> 
> Title is from [The Cure by Tegan and Sara](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAu0WxaYFro). 
> 
> **Warnings:** detailed description of scars and chronic pain, negative body-focused self-talk, mild ableist language/sentiments. 
> 
> I've been sitting on this one for a while. Decided to post it today because it's a completely normal Tuesday and there's no reason why anyone might need a distraction today.

“The power _and_ the water are out?” 

“Yes, Hokage-sama. I’m terribly sorry, sir.”

The inn’s clerk certainly looks sorry, practically cowering behind the spacious wooden check-in desk.

“And this low-budget joint is the place we’re settin’ up for the nobles and shit to stay at?” Naruto throws his arms behind his head and cracks his neck. “Man, I gotta have a talk with Shikamaru. That ain’t gonna fly.”

The inn is hardly a low-budget affair, despite Naruto’s declaration. The floors are buffed to an immaculate shine, and the rice paper partitions that make up the walls are handsomely decorated with elaborate painted scenes of Konoha’s founding and history. There is a low table near the entranceway with a box of flavored teas and a handwritten sign in elegant calligraphy declaring them ‘complementary’. 

The inn’s lobby is, however, rather dim, presently lit only by a handful of stubby candles. And it’s the same warm of a Konoha summer evening within as it is outdoors. 

“We’re waiting on a delivery of jutsu batteries, Hokage-sama, sir, to power our generator. But they might not come until tomorrow, and in the meantime, we thought it best to offer our guests vouchers for the other local hotels.”

“Oh, good! Then lay one on me!” Naruto sticks his false arm across the counter, palm-up.

“That is, sir.” The clerk gulps. “We just gave away our last one. If we had known the reservation was for the Kazekage, of course we would have held one, but—”

The clerk’s eyes snap to Gaara’s face and grow even wider and more watery. He bows rapidly and repeatedly.

“I’m certain that one of the other guests would be more than happy to give up their voucher if they knew it was for—”

“Don’t worry about it.” Gaara raises a hand, and the clerk stops as if frozen in a genjutsu. “I’ll be fine.”

Gaara doesn’t technically _need_ sleep. In fact, he gets by just fine without it. But after three days’ travel across the desert, he was rather looking forward to a full night’s rest in a proper bed. But he can spend the night out at the training fields or in the forest if he has to. It certainly won’t be the first sleepless night he’s spent wandering Konoha’s streets. 

Gaara turns his head to look over his shoulder. “Kankuro, do you think you can fend for yourself for a night?”

“Huh?” Kankuro glances up from tightening a joint on Kuroari as though he hasn’t been paying attention at all. “Yeah, I was gonna go out drinking with some buddies, so I’ll probably just crash wherever.”

This, Gaara knows, means that Kankuro intends to spend the night on one of the disheveled piles of fur at the Inuzuka compound, but he knows better than to mention this in front of Naruto. Gaara’s eardrums still haven’t quite recovered from Naruto’s reaction to the revelation that Shikamaru and Temari were dating. 

Kankuro does not offer for Gaara to accompany him, for obvious reasons. 

“Ugh, this blows!” Naruto shakes his head and makes a rather rude gesture over his shoulder at the clerk. It’s most unbecoming of a Kage, but Naruto has never been quite traditional. “I’d offer you to come stay at my place, dude, but Boruto’s teething, and I don’t think anybody wants to put up with that. I swear, that kid can scream louder than Sakura when he really gets going.” 

The bags beneath Naruto’s eyes are obvious even in the flickering candle light. His shoulders sag. 

“Don’t trouble yourself.” Gaara shoulders his pack, already silently mapping the trajectory to Training Field Nine, which is situated on a treeless expanse of rock and therefore has the best view of the stars. 

As they make for the door, a familiar bowl cut speeds past in a green blur, his hand on the shoulder of an older man in very fine clothes.

“And you’re sure you know your way to the hotel?” Lee is saying. “You don’t need a further escort? Okay, then! Thank you so much! Have a wonderful evening!” 

He bows several times as the old man walks out into the night. 

“Lee?” 

He must be escorting that … merchant, Gaara assumes. Certainly not a high-ranking noble, or else Gaara would have recognized the man. 

Lee’s head whips around as if on a pivot. 

“Gaara-kun!” He’s at Gaara’s side in an instant, grabbing his hand. “It’s wonderful to see you! Oh, and Naruto-kun and Kankuro-kun too, of course,” he adds hastily, hardly sparing a glance at either of them. He’s still shaking Gaara’s hand at a rapid clip, beaming with both hands clasped around Gaara’s. 

His hands are very large and much warmer than the sticky summer air. 

Gaara wonders why he didn’t go in for a hug. 

With a small amount of regret, Gaara frees his hand so he can grip Lee by the elbow. 

“You look like you’ve been well,” he says, taking a step closer and dropping his voice, only for Lee’s ears. 

Lee has removed the sleeves from his jumpsuit since the last time Gaara visited Konoha, and the impressive musculature of his upper arms is on full display. There’s a sizeable scar that wraps almost fully around one bicep, striated like a rope burn. It’s not particularly shiny or fresh. Gaara wonders when Lee got it, when he was last so careless with his defenses as to sustain an injury of that severity. Lee does not look out for himself nearly as much as he should, although Gaara has privately hoped that the addition of an infant to the mix would have slowed him. 

Something about the vigor with which Lee seized his hand just now tells him that train of thought was a fool’s errand. 

“I have been!” Lee beams, inching yet closer. “Did you get my last letter?” 

Lee’s face is very close. His teeth are bright and shining, even in the candlelight. He does not appear even a fraction as exhausted as Naruto, despite their sons being close in age. 

Gaara assumes Lee’s made the decision to alter his outfit for the intimidation factor, but to him at least, Lee looks—

“Yo, Bushy Brows!” Naruto practically shoulders his way in between the two of them. 

Lee jumps a good couple inches, skittering backwards as Gaara releases him. 

“Perfect timing!” Naruto barrels on. “This rinky-dink place lost power, d’ya know?”

“Yes!” Lee straightens. “My charge just informed me. He’s going to have to stay at another hotel tonight.” His face goes contemplative, suddenly, his dark eyes flicking from Naruto to Gaara and Kankuro, then dropping to their bags. “Were you two checking in?” 

His eyes settle on Gaara, and his mouth drops into a worried frown. 

“I didn’t even know you were coming to visit.”

The two of them have become rather active penpals in the past few years, sending letters back and forth between their villages whenever Lee has a spare moment between missions and Gaara has a brief respite between meetings and paperwork. 

A hawk from Konoha has the potential to brighten Gaara’s entire week, and at times the promise of a letter from Lee on his desk is the only bright spot of his day, like a special reward for having survived yet one more tedious meeting. It’s become customary for Gaara to apprise Lee of his trips to Konoha, whereupon Gaara will specially request Lee as his escort, and Lee will arrange for at least an evening’s entertainment for them both if the schedule can spare it. 

It isn’t much, as far as friendships go, getting to see each other only every few months and only under the auspices of work. And lately, for Gaara, it’s felt like … not enough.

“It was a last-minute visit,” Gaara assures him. He moves past Naruto to take Lee’s elbow once more, and Lee shoots him a grateful smile. 

“Yeah, so Gaara’s S.O.L. on a place to stay the night!” Naruto blabbers, completely ignorant of the silent conversation taking place between Lee and Gaara’s eyes. Lee’s desperate glance of, _I was worried you didn’t want my company anymore,_ and Gaara’s thumb stroking the inside of his elbow to say, _I would never not want to spend time with you._ “Hey, your place has two rooms, right?” 

“It does!” Lee’s gaze snaps back to Naruto as if startled once more. “But—Well. There’s just the one bed. I got rid of the guest bed when I moved Metal’s crib in. Nobody ever used it anyway.”

“Please don’t worry about it.” Gaara rubs his thumb more firmly across the bandaged inside of Lee’s elbow. “I’ll just stay up tonight.”

Lee looks at him with an expression of horror. “You can’t just not sleep! That’s not healthy for you.”

“I don’t need to sleep.”

“You _do_!”

“Then it’s settled!” Naruto claps his hands on both their shoulders. “Gaara can camp out at Bushy Brows’ place tonight, and we’ll find you guys a better place to stay tomorrow.”

“O-of course! My bed is always open for Gaara-kun.” Lee flushes, suddenly and so darkly it’s visible even by candlelight. “That—that is! To use!” He slaps a hand over his mouth. “For—for sleeping! Just for sleeping!” 

“Good deal!” Naruto seems not to notice Lee’s panic, throwing his head back and yawning spectacularly. “Now speaking of sleep, let’s blow this popsicle stand. I’m bushed.”

* * *

Tenten is in Lee’s living room when they arrive.

“Oh? You’re back early.” She sits up from Lee’s couch and pockets the kunai she’s been sharpening. “Well, Metal’s already down for the night. He ate really well, and—” She goes up on her tiptoes to peer over Lee’s shoulder. “G—Kazekage-sama? What are you doing here?”

“Gaara is spending the night,” Lee explains, setting Gaara’s bag down in the genkan. He’d snatched Gaara’s pack off his shoulder the moment they stepped into the muggy street, insisting it was only polite. 

Tenten frowns at the both of them, eyes narrowed. 

Gaara ignores her. It’s pleasantly cool in Lee’s apartment, the aircon on full blast against the summer’s heat. He takes his hat off immediately and rolls his shoulders, basking in the gust of the cold air across his sweaty neck. 

“Lee,” she says sharply, “a moment?”

“Um, sure!” Lee follows her into his small kitchenette. “Please make yourself at home, Gaara-kun!”

Tenten tugs Lee down by the ear until he’s bent nearly in half to meet her height. Lee has shot up like a weed since their chuunin exams, and now he’s among the tallest of Konoha’s jounin. Tenten has been blessed with no such virtues, though she’s currently making up for her diminutive stature with the ferocity of her pinched grip twisting Lee’s earlobe. 

“Did you forget you only have one bed?” she hisses. 

Gaara suspects Tenten thinks he can’t hear her. Unfortunately for her, Gaara’s retained his jinchuuriki senses despite the demon no longer inhabiting him, and his hearing is very keen. 

“No, of course not,” Lee whispers back, and Gaara doesn’t even need heightened senses to hear him, because Lee’s version of a whisper is any other shinobi’s version of a normal speaking voice. “But he didn’t have anywhere else to sleep, and he was just planning to stay awake all night.”

“So? Who cares?” Tenten cuts off any further explanation from Lee with a sharp look. “I hope you know what you’re getting into.”

Lee stands up straight and wrests his ear from her grasp. “I do,” he announces, clearly projecting his voice. “Thank you very much for your help tonight, Tenten! I’ll see you in the morning.”

Tenten sees herself out, though not without a seething look cast over her shoulder at Gaara. 

“My bedroom is just this way.” Lee steps between Gaara and the cracked front door. He kicks it shut behind him, cutting off Tenten’s threatening glower. 

“I don’t think she likes me,” Gaara comments, following Lee down the short hall.

“Ah, Tenten is just … protective.” Lee fakes a quiet laugh. “You know how friends can be.” He peeks inside one of the two identical shut doors, smiles and blows a kiss, and then opens the second. “Here we are!”

The room within is utterly _Lee_. Everything is decorated in cheerful greens, from the lotus-print bedspread to the short curtains hanging in the window. Gaara counts no fewer than five distinct weight sets in various corners. The walls are hung with scrolls and posters all bedecked with exhortations to train, fight, and do one’s best. Concerningly, one of them bears the grinning mug of Lee’s teacher, flexing and giving a thumbs-up, a massive lens flare rebounding off his teeth. 

There’s a small, open wardrobe with a tidy line of identical jumpsuits within—which answers one of Gaara’s burning questions, that Lee _does_ in fact have multiple jumpsuits, and doesn’t simply wash and wear the same one every day—and a nightstand with a baby monitor on it, next to which stands a framed picture of Lee and his teammates from their genin days. 

Gaara wanders over and picks the photo up while Lee is explaining where to find the bathroom, and that if Gaara needs anything, not to hesitate to wake him up. 

In the photograph, Lee’s hair is shorn and choppy, falling reckless over his hitai-ate. It must have been taken before he was gifted his green suit, because he’s wearing a beige uniform belted across his chest. Tenten is in the middle, her hair in twin pigtails instead of the buns she wears now, and Neji Hyuuga, Gaara recognizes with a pang of regret, is glaring indifferently off the side of the frame, while Lee scowls over Tenten’s head at him. 

“When was this taken?” Gaara asks. 

“Hmm?” Lee looks up from arranging Gaara’s pack by the wall. “Oh, that old thing. Gosh, it’s been so long I can’t even remember.” He crosses the room and plucks the photograph from Gaara’s fingers. “I apologize. I’ll put it away. You probably don’t want to stare at my weird fish eyes all night while you’re trying to sleep.” 

Gaara lays a hand on Lee’s forearm to still him. 

“No,” he says. “Leave it.” He takes the picture frame back from Lee and sets it in its place on the nightstand, then straightens it. “You were cute as a child.” 

“You don’t need to lie to spare my feelings.” Lee gives him an odd look. “I’ve heard it all.” 

“Heard what?” 

“Google-eyes, caterpillar brows, drop-out, loser.” Lee snorts a derisive little laugh. “You know, the usual schoolyard teasing.” 

He makes to walk away, and Gaara’s hand tightens on his arm. He can’t restrain Lee—not physically, not without getting the sand involved—but Lee stops nonetheless.

“Who said that to you?” Gaara’s voice comes out sharper than intended. 

“It’s fine. I’m not sensitive about my looks anymore,” Lee dodges the question. “My eyebrows make me look more like Gai-sensei, and I could hope for no more noble an idol!” He exhales hard through his nose, turning his head. “I’m just glad Metal didn’t get _all_ my features. His eyes look normal, don’t you think?” 

“Of course his eyes are normal,” Gaara says, thrown by the abrupt change in topic. “But, Lee—”

Lee isn’t looking at him. Gaara almost wants to take him by the face and turn him, to make Lee meet his eyes. 

“—you know I don’t think any of those things.” 

Lee’s still staring at the floor, but he smiles wanly. “I know,” he says. “But I wouldn’t fault you if you did.” 

Gaara does grab Lee’s face, then, with both hands, and jerks him around to look at him. He pulls Lee’s face down until they’re just inches apart, even though Lee has to stoop to Gaara’s height. 

“I like how your eyes look,” Gaara tells him, with all the fierceness and seriousness inexplicably beating at his breastbone. “I don’t think they look weird or fishy at all. They’re large and expressive and handsome.” 

Lee’s cheeks have gone quite warm beneath Gaara’s palms. His pupils are blown wide against the deep brown of his irises. 

“You … think I’m handsome?” 

Gaara drops his hands to scoff. “Of course I do.” He has to take a half-step back to gain enough space to cross his arms over his chest, feeling suddenly exposed. “I’m not _blind_.” 

“I—” Lee’s voice comes out choked. “That is. You are—”

“Where are you going to be sleeping, anyway?” Gaara interrupts him. “You don’t have a couch.”

“Oh.” Lee stands back up to his full height, and Gaara is suddenly acutely aware of the difference in size between them, how Lee seems to tower over him, how much taller and broader he is. “I hadn’t really thought about it! I suppose I can just throw down a blanket on the floor in Metal’s room. Or—ooh!” He balls his fists up in front of his chest. “I could stay awake all night to train! That would be quite the challenge, wouldn’t it? A nonstop, eight-hour training session after a full day’s work?”

Gaara’s jaw hangs slack, and it takes him a moment to gather up the words to say, “Don’t be stupid.”

“I—” Lee freezes. His hands drop to his sides. A crooked frown crosses his face, his eyebrows canted upwards with disappointment. 

“I’m not going to kick you out of your own bed. If the alternative is you sleeping on the floor or not sleeping at all, we can just share.”

“Share?” Lee squeaks. 

“Yes? Haven’t you ever had to share a bedroll with your teammates?” 

“Of course! But—But you’re the _Kazekage_. I couldn’t—” 

“I’ve had to share sleeping quarters before,” Gaara cuts him off. “With Kankuro, on missions. I’m sure you’ll be a much more agreeable bedmate than he is.”

“My bed is very small!” Lee protests. “We wouldn’t be able to fit without touching!” 

That notion sparks something in Gaara, but he tamps it down, shrugging the feeling away. “That might be a problem if you were someone else. But I don’t mind you touching me.” 

“I—I see.” Lee exhales shakily. “Well, then! I will be the most respectful bedtime companion you’ve ever had! If I am not, then I’ll—”

“Lee,” Gaara hisses warningly. “Lower your voice. Metal’s sleeping.”

“Right!” Lee whispers back. “I’ll just go get changed, then.”

* * *

Gaara has just finished buttoning the front of his sleep shirt when Lee returns from the bathroom with his jumpsuit balled up under his arm, his bandages loose with their knotted ends dangling but not yet fully unwrapped. 

“You forgot your pajamas,” Gaara guesses, unable to tear his eyes away from Lee’s exposed chest. 

Lee is always very decorous, especially in public. For someone who wears a bright green, skintight suit everywhere, he’s actually rather shy and modest. Gaara has never seen him shirtless before. The muscles of his chest and abdomen are even more well-defined than Gaara would have assumed from seeing their outlines beneath the thin fabric of his jumpsuit. There’s a long scar bisecting one brown nipple, carved deep into his chest. More little white lines of scar tissue are scattered all over his torso, evidence of a life hard-fought. 

“What?” Lee looks down at himself. “No, I normally just sleep in my boxers.”

Gaara’s pulse is hammering somewhere up in his throat. There’s a noise in his ears, harsh and loud, that he doesn’t yet recognize as his own breathing. 

“Your … underwear.” 

And indeed, all that Lee has on below the waist are small, white shorts in tremendously thin fabric. The muscles of his thighs bulge below the hems, impossibly cut and thickly muscled. They’re just as scarred as his chest is, and there’s a line of stitches along one knobby knee. And below … 

Oh. 

Below, on Lee’s left calf, is a mangled mass of scar tissue, pink and red and silvery white. There are two massive surgical scars on either side of his shinbone, and the rest of his skin is a disaster of pitted, misshapen marks.

Gaara swallows back his bile. 

He’s never seen the effects of the sand in living flesh before.

“I didn’t realize it would embarrass you,” Lee says, turning to the side as if that would give Gaara less of his bare flesh to see. “I will just sleep in my clothes!”

He shakes the jumpsuit out, and his hitai-ate clatters to the floor.

“It doesn’t.” Gaara’s eyes snap up from Lee’s ruined lower leg with a start. Turned away as he is, the muscles of Lee’s ribs are on display, flexing as he tugs the neck of his suit wide and makes to step back into it. “Don’t disrupt your routine on my behalf. Sleep however you want.”

Lee pauses. He sets his foot back on the ground. At least his left foot seems to work just as well as his right, despite the fact that his toes are curled under themselves and withered-looking. 

“I will put a shirt on,” he announces. 

The shirt he chooses does little to hide his musculature, threadbare and far too tight across the chest. 

Lee frowns down at the ‘Rock Lee Dojo’ logo on the chest, the printed pattern warped by the stretch of his flesh. 

“I suppose it’s been a while since I’ve worn this,” he says. 

“When did you open your dojo?” Gaara asks, feeling rather overdressed in his full-length pajama pants and long-sleeved shirt. The aircon is still noisily kicking over, but his skin right now feels over-warm. 

“Oh, it’s been a while.” Lee hums as he sits down on the side of the bed closest to the nightstand and begins to unwrap his bandages. “I was only a chuunin when I built it.” 

“You built it?”

Lee starts the unwinding on his right arm, his motions slow and meticulous as he ties up the bandages into tidy little rolls. This is a small reprieve, because it gives Gaara time to prepare. 

“Yes, with my own two hands! It was part of my recovery, actually, training to fight more and more serious opponents while I built up my strength.” 

He begins unwrapping his left arm. 

Gaara thought he was braced for it, but it still knocks the breath right out of him. 

The damage there is just as severe as on Lee’s leg, if not worse. The fingers bend easily—likely thanks to the surgery Lee staked his whole career on—but Gaara can’t make out the shape of his knuckles beneath the gnarls of silvery scar tissue. Lee’s entire forearm is covered in a patina of white speckles, little holes where individual grains of sand drilled into him. There’s another long scar that stretches from the back of his wrist to his elbow, the lingering purple staple marks on either side evidence of its medical origin. 

All this time, Gaara’s been touching Lee’s arm, grabbing Lee’s arm … has Lee ever even felt his touch? 

“Are you all right?” Lee looks up then at Gaara’s face, at his body frozen mid-approach to the bed. “Your breathing’s gone—”

He traces the path of Gaara’s stare.

His mouth crumples very small and very tight. 

“Oh.” He tucks his arm behind himself, positioning his left leg behind the relatively unmarked right one, his posture suddenly stiff and defensive. “Sorry. I forget how ugly they are sometimes.” 

“It’s not that—” Gaara chokes on the words. 

“I think I hear Metal fussing.” Lee stands abruptly. “Don’t wait up on my account,” he says from the door. “You’ve been traveling a long time.”

Gaara sits heavily on the far side of the bed. 

Lee is either hearing things or he’s lying, because the room one thin wall away is utterly silent, and the monitor on Lee’s bedside table hasn’t so much as crackled. 

Footsteps pace several laps up and down the hall before Gaara finally hears the muffled creak of Metal’s bedroom door opening. Quiet thumping, like objects being unnecessarily rearranged or the fidgeting of uncertain hands, sounds loud through the wall. Lee’s making little shushing noises, clicking and humming that could be the last few bars of a lullaby. 

Gaara lies down on his side and stares at Lee’s bedroom window. Lee has only one pillow, and Gaara won’t deny him it, so he rests his head on his arm. There’s a crack in the curtains, and outside the whole of Konoha appears pitch black. 

How many apologies are enough, Gaara wonders, to make up for damaging someone in that way? How did Lee ever manage to forgive him?

Gaara doesn’t know that he would be able to extend someone the same kindness Lee has offered him so unthinkingly. 

‘I don’t hold a grudge,’ Lee told him once. Well, perhaps someone needs to hold the grudge on his behalf. Gaara is certainly no stranger to guilt, but somehow he’s managed to put aside their bloody history in the face of Lee’s kindness, his sunshine optimism.

Now, with the evidence of his misdeeds, Gaara isn’t so sure he can continue on with his ignorance. 

Lee is truly a wonder of a man. Gaara couldn’t hope to begin to measure up to—

The bedroom door glides open, quiet as a whisper. 

“Already asleep?” Lee’s voice is the barest murmur. “Good.”

Gaara isn’t, but he quietens his chakra so Lee doesn’t suspect a thing. 

A warm hand cups the side of his head, lifts it, and slides the pillow beneath. There’s the creaking of mattress springs as Lee arranges himself on the other side of the bed. 

A heavy blanket comes up and covers them both. Strong, broad hands tuck the covers in around Gaara’s curled limbs. 

It’s a struggle not to react, not to reach for Lee’s scarred arm and beg him to wait, to apologize again as if that would undo any of the harm he’s done. The problem with words is that they’re inadequate. The problem with actions is that they, too, are inadequate. 

Instead, Gaara holds himself very still. Lee lies down, and the muscles of his back lay just parallel to Gaara’s, just the slightest hint of heated touch. 

“Goodnight,” Lee whispers, and the light goes out.

Faint light comes through the gap in the curtains, gauzy and yellow from the streetlamps outside. 

Gaara’s stomach aches with a hunger that he can’t name.

He watches the shadow of moths flicker by the windowpane, their fluttering bodies illuminated as they seek that false moon, as they get singed and spiral down to earth. 

Eventually, Lee’s breathing slows and turns to snores.

Eventually, Gaara sleeps.

* * *

Gaara wakes up in an embrace. 

Lee’s shifted sometime in the night, and now his chest is pressed to Gaara’s back. He’s got an arm thrown over Gaara’s waist, warm as the blood pumping just below the damaged skin. 

The streetlight has gone out sometime in the night, and the moon has already set. It must be just a few hours until dawn. 

Lee tightens his arm, and even through the thick fabric of his pajama shirt, Gaara can feel every hot muscle of that broad chest, the tiny pebbles of Lee’s nipples against his shoulder blades. Lee’s nose nuzzles the back of his head, and then he smacks his lips and mumbles, “Gaara-kun.” 

Gaara holds himself very still and focuses his senses. Lee has hardly any control over his chakra, so there’s not a chance he’s feigning sleep right now. His chakra is a placid, rumbling purr, its presence solid but not overwhelming along Gaara’s spine. 

Breath escapes Gaara in a sigh. 

“Mmm, missed you,” Lee murmurs into his hair, “Gaara-kun. ‘S been too long.” 

Gaara’s heart is racing. He reminds himself once more that Lee is only sleeping, talking nonsense. 

He feels so safe here, so protected with Lee behind him like a shield. Lee’s body is rocking his with his breaths, moving him like a tide, and yet the sand in the gourd that he set at the bedside remains inert. It senses no threat here, and neither does Gaara. 

But something deep beneath his ribs _aches_. It clenches tighter than a Sand Coffin around his heart, unfurls petals of _want_ all throughout his chest, like a cactus coming into bloom after rain.

The feelings lay themselves out in a tidy line in his mind, name themselves quite against his will. It’s inexorable, how they unfold in the space of his drowsy, half-waking brain. 

How clear it all is, suddenly.

What a fool he’s been. 

The casual touches, the letters, the missing, the _longing_. It’s lust, but not only that. It’s also desire. Affection. Maybe even love. 

The skin around the scar on his forehead tightens and prickles. 

It may be too soon to name them all. 

Then Lee slides his palm up Gaara’s stomach and across his chest, and Gaara catches a glimpse of those silvery scars, aglow in the night vision granted to him by Shukaku. 

And on comes the guilt, overtaking Gaara’s body like a sandstorm takes an oasis, blotting out everything else with its haze. 

Lee’s fingertips, the skin that his bandages don’t cover, are the least-marked part of his left hand. They are, perhaps, just slightly more pink and calloused than the rest of his skin. Gaara wonders if this is why Lee doesn’t wrap his bandages all the way to the ends of his fingers, or if there is a more practical reason behind it. 

He even still has his fingernails, Gaara notes, as Lee’s hand slips clumsily under the hem of his shirt and scratches slow, gentle circles on his belly. 

Gaara shudders. He shuts his eyes tight. 

Lee squeezes him yet closer, pressing their bodies flush. 

There is suddenly very little room in Gaara’s mind for anything but _sensation_ , because Lee’s hips are aligned with his backside, the jut of his erection heavy and prominent. 

“Oh, Gaara-kun,” Lee’s sleep-heavy words trickle down Gaara’s spine, “please.” 

His hips rock so achingly slowly, his bare knee slipping between Gaara’s thighs. 

Lee’s cock must have slipped from the confines of his boxers, because Gaara can feel the wet spot it’s leaving on the seat of his pajama pants. It only takes a few slow grinds of Lee along the underside of his ass before he, too, finds himself getting hard. 

There’s a knot of panic just below his diaphragm, stopping his lungs from fully inflating, making his breathing shallow. There’s fear there now. Guilt, too, still, even as the sight of Lee’s ruined arm vanishes up his shirtfront and makes his skin break out in goosebumps. But more than any of that, there’s _want_. 

Gaara doesn’t move. Neither to respond nor to wake Lee and put a stop to this. 

It’s probably wrong to enjoy it, to soak in Lee’s breathy little moans and murmurs, the lazy, lustful spilling of Gaara’s name from his lips. Lee, after all, has no idea what he’s doing. He thinks he’s in a dream. 

But—

“Ah, yes,” Lee hisses, his lips wet. “Just—just like that, Gaara-kun.” 

—Lee clearly _knows_ that Gaara’s there, or at least some dreamed version of Gaara, because his mouth is open and pressed to the knob of Gaara’s spine, gusting hot breath down his collar as he mumbles, “Gaara-kun, Gaara-kun,” in between what might be meant as kisses. 

And then, thrillingly, just:

“Gaara. I’m going to—” 

Gaara can’t hold back a shiver. He bites his lip. He is painfully hard, the buttoned fly of his pajama pants constraining. Lee has him clutched close, but he’s not pinning Gaara’s arm down, and Gaara wonders if it would really be so bad if—

Lee’s breath catches. 

His chakra flares to life.

His whole body goes stock-still. 

“Gaara-kun?” he whispers, his voice high and shaky. 

Gaara doesn’t trust his voice not to crack when he replies, “Lee.” 

“How long—” Lee swallows audibly. “How long have you been awake?” 

Lee’s still holding him close, but the longer Gaara goes without answering, the more his grip slackens. He’s still hard between Gaara’s thighs, but he starts to inch his hips backwards just slightly. 

“I’m so s—” 

Gaara grabs Lee’s arm and pulls it back tight against his chest, snapping his hips backward to chase Lee’s retreating groin.

“You don’t have to stop.” 

“What?” Lee’s shock and confusion are palpable. 

Gaara rolls over within Lee’s grip and rubs himself along Lee’s front, making sure Lee is completely aware of how interested his body is in a continuation of the proceedings. 

“I said, don’t stop.” 

He rolls his hips against Lee’s once more. The pressure of Lee’s hipbone against his straining dick is exquisite in the relief it offers, and he bites back a hiss. Lee’s own dick throbs against him, hot and dribbling precum onto the front of Gaara’s sleep slacks. 

“Gaara-kun—” Lee’s vocal register is all the way at the top of his throat, choked-off. “—you don’t have to feel obligated to—”

Gaara is tired of listening to Lee blame himself. 

He grabs Lee’s face in both hands and kisses him. 

Lee’s mouth is stale with sleep from breathing open-mouthed on Gaara’s neck, but his lips are soft and pliant and they fall open against Gaara’s with a subdued moan. Gaara sucks Lee’s lower lip into his mouth and grinds against him once more. The pressure, the intensity are searing. 

He pulls back with a wet gasp and another slow, hard circle of his hips against Lee’s. His sleep pants are saturated now, the fabric damp and clinging. Lee’s arm is still wrapped around him under his shirt, rucking the fabric up so the bare skin of Gaara’s belly brushes the hard plane of Lee’s abdominal muscles when he ruts them together. Lee’s fingers clench on Gaara’s shoulder blade.

“We should talk about this,” Lee whispers. 

Gaara kisses him once more, open-mouthed, tongue probing.

“We will.” Another kiss, gentler this time, longer. “Later. But first, just this.” 

Gaara works his knee between Lee’s thighs, presses upward on instinct. 

Lee drops his lips to Gaara’s forehead and _whimpers_. 

There’s something so private about this, so isolated and almost magical, swathed in the darkness of Lee’s small room in the silent predawn. Even the crickets have gone to bed, and the birds have not yet awoken. The streets of Konoha are silent, and all the sound in the world is captured right here between them, in the little, urgent noises escaping Lee’s lips while Gaara rubs against him. There is no guilt here right now. No shame. It’s like a time outside of time: just this single pillow, now holding both their heads; just these bedsheets, growing damp from their sweat; just this breath, shared between them. Like there’s nothing else in the whole wide world but the connection between their bodies. 

Lee bites off a groan, and something tickles at the back of Gaara’s mind. 

With excruciating reluctance, he forces his hips still. He lays his hands on Lee’s shoulders and warns his thumbs not to circle in the hollows of Lee’s collarbones. 

“We can stop,” he murmurs, “if you don’t want this.” 

Lee’s dark, handsome eyes go wide, blinking rapidly as if to clear the sleep that still clings in his long lower lashes.

“Of course I want this,” he breathes. He slips his hand from Gaara’s shirt and trails it around to cup Gaara’s face. “I just can’t believe that you do.” 

“Why wouldn’t I?” Gaara frowns.

Lee’s lips part, and it looks like he has quite a few answers to that question, so Gaara kisses him quiet. 

“Don’t answer that,” he murmurs into Lee’s mouth. “I didn’t know I wanted this before, or I would have asked for it sooner.” 

Lee breathes the words in and closes his eyes. His eyebrows drawn down and close in the middle, his expression working like he’s willing himself to believe it. 

Gaara knows that he believes what Lee says, because Lee told him once in a letter, shortly after Naruto’s wedding, that lying about one’s feelings is among the most despicable actions a man can take. He only hopes that Lee believes him, too. Untruths, after all, are part of a shinobi’s arsenal. But there are no advantages to be won here, no strategy, only want and need, heat and desire and a feeling so large and so bright it threatens to crack Gaara’s ribs from the inside. Gaara wishes he would have had the foresight to act before tonight, before they were both so close to the edge of desperation that any reassurances, any promises would ring hollow. 

He’ll have many such promises to make to Lee in the light of day, he thinks. And—his eye catches the whorl of a scar on the inside of Lee’s thumb as Lee strokes his cheek—apologies, too. 

Gaara breaks their kiss to catch his breath, pulling back just enough to study Lee for a moment because he has the luxury of doing so even in the dark, where his reactions can’t be observed. Lee’s round face is tilted up towards him, his expression soft and his mouth spit-shiny wet. There’s sweat in the hollow of his throat, the smell of salt on him. His chest glistens with it as he pants. His expressive, handsome eyes are scrunched closed. 

“Can you feel this?” Gaara trails a finger up the underside of Lee’s left arm, just to the side of the surgical scar, experimental. 

Lee shivers, licks his lips. “Yes.”

Gaara lifts Lee’s wrist and presses a kiss there, on the thin, warped skin. “And this?”

“Yes,” Lee whispers.

His tongue trails, soft and slow, from the pulse-point of Lee’s wrist up to the hollow of his elbow. “This too?”

“Yes.” It’s nothing more than a hiss of breath. 

“I thought the damage might be too much,” Gaara murmurs back. “But you still have sensation there.” He rubs his clothed leg down the inside of Lee’s thigh and curls his toes against his left calf. “And here?” 

Lee is trembling. “Tsunade-sama is an excellent physician. She was able to preserve most of the nerve endings.” 

Gaara scrapes his teeth across the inside of Lee’s elbow, sucking at the skin there. Lee’s breath goes shivery. 

“The only trade-off is the pain,” Lee adds.

“Pain?” Gaara draws back as if scalded.

“It doesn’t hurt right now.” Lee gropes blindly for Gaara’s hand and finally finds it hovering somewhere out in the dark space above them, pulling it back in. He squeezes Gaara’s fingers, hands clasped between them. “You aren’t hurting me. It’s because some of the nerves aren’t quite where they’re supposed to be, that’s what Tsunade-sama said. Or they’re supposed to map to muscles that aren’t there anymore, and it confuses them. But it’s only sometimes. Not right now.” 

He loosens his grip on Gaara’s hand, and Gaara lets his fingers trail back up Lee’s palm, the inside of his wrist. 

“Right now it feels—” Lee takes a shaky breath, blinks his eyes open. “—it feels good. Are you sure I’m not still dreaming?”

Gaara edges the slightest bit closer, locks their legs together. He wishes he were undressed right now, but in order to get naked he’d need to pull back from the warmth of Lee’s body. 

“What were you dreaming about?” 

“Something like this.” Lee clutches him closer. His lower lip is swollen from Gaara sucking on it. 

“But not exactly this,” Gaara guesses.

The flush on Lee’s face appears in Gaara’s infrared vision like a shadow across his cheeks. Gaara can smell the blood just below the skin of his face, hear its pulse. 

“Not _exactly_ ,” Lee admits. 

“What was different?” 

Lee’s thighs clench around Gaara’s with a flex of powerful muscle; his dick jumps against Gaara’s hip. 

“Um, well. You were naked, for one.” He gulps. 

This gives Gaara the incentive he needs to lean back enough to start unbuttoning his sleep shirt. 

“And?” he prods. 

“And—” The blush darkens. Lee’s eyes aren’t quite focused; Gaara doubts he can see much in the low light, but his hand drifts to stroke the bit of Gaara’s chest exposed by his shirt falling open. “And—um. We were …” He shakes his head, the tidy lined-up edges of his bowl cut flying. “I can’t say it.” 

Gaara gets his shirt open enough to shrug it off one shoulder. He lets it fall to the blankets; he can worry about the other sleeve later. 

Lee’s thumb swipes across one of his nipples. 

Or never. He can worry about it never, if Lee keeps touching him like this. 

“Show me,” Gaara breathes, “what you were dreaming.” 

Lee nods hurriedly. “Okay.”

Lee wriggles until his boxers are down, kicking them away and out from under the covers. Then he turns his attention to the waistband of Gaara’s pants. He seems to have overlooked the buttons, pushing at the band fruitlessly until Gaara reaches down and guides his fingers to the fasteners. 

Lee makes quick work of them, his fingers only slipping a few times on the slick plastic. Gaara lifts his hips as Lee’s fingers tug the fabric down, and then Lee’s wrapping his arm tight around the small of Gaara’s back to draw them together, and—

_Oh._

They’re skin-to-skin, and it’s like nothing Gaara has ever imagined before. He’s a little delirious with it, giddy even, with the sweat-dampness and the heat and the texture of Lee’s body rubbing all across every last sensitive inch of him. He feels like a single raw nerve, all goosebumps and hair standing on end and pulsing, tremulous arousal. 

And then Lee shifts his hips just so, lines them up and thrusts against Gaara’s dick, and Gaara can’t hold back the guttural cry that erupts from him. 

“Shh.” Lee’s big hand is back on the side of his face, tugging him close for a kiss. “The walls are very thin here.” 

But if Lee keeps moving against him like that, all slow rolls of his hips and wicked pressure, Gaara isn’t sure he’ll be able to refrain from waking Lee’s son and all his neighbors besides. So Gaara fists a hand in the back of Lee’s hair and holds him right up against his mouth, so that every little gasp and cry is spilled right against Lee’s lips, muffled by his tongue and teeth. 

Lee is not nearly so vocal now as he was when he was asleep. The only sounds coming from him now are tiny, subdued groans and little eruptions of harsh breath. There is certainly no reverent repetition of Gaara’s name, no trip or fall into informality. 

“Was this it?” Gaara whispers into Lee’s mouth, urgent. His dick is steadily streaming precum now, slicking the motions of their rutting. His nipples scrape against Lee’s chest with every desperate writhe, against the scratch of Lee’s sparse chest hair and the texture of his scars. There’s a precipice somewhere here, just out of his reach. 

“Um,” Lee mouths back, and his tongue slips against Gaara’s teeth. “Almost, just—”

He works a hand between them and takes them both in his fist. 

A single stroke of that firm hand has Gaara’s hips bucking, his back arching. 

He bites the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t bite Lee’s mouth. 

Gaara is consumed by _Lee_ , by the squeezing warmth of his hand and the spongy hardness of his dick lined up against Gaara’s own so he can see— _feel_ —that they’re almost the exact same size, a perfect match. There’s the drag of the coarse hair around Lee’s balls against his own when they rock against each other, the twisting friction of Lee’s hand up and over and around the both of them, the wettest noise when the heads of their dicks pop from that heated channel and drag together back in. 

Gaara kisses Lee hard, because if he doesn’t, he might throw his head back and scream.

He doesn’t mean to pull Lee’s hair, but he must, because Lee’s head tips back and he gasps out, “G—Gaara-kun.” 

And Gaara pitches right over the edge, spilling filthy all over Lee’s fists and both their stomachs, coming harder than he ever has in his life. 

Lee works him through it with steady strokes that gentle just before they tip over into hypersensitivity, and then he wraps both strong arms around Gaara and pulls him so close there isn’t room for any air between them. Lee rocks against the slippery heat of Gaara’s spend for just a few short thrusts, hips stuttering. 

Lee turns his face to the sweaty crook where Gaara’s neck meets his shoulder, and Gaara feels his teeth bared when he hisses, “ _Gaara,_ ” as he comes. 

It’s almost enough to get Gaara hard again, the shedding of that formality more desirable, more erotic than any disrobing. 

“Lee,” Gaara whispers, when Lee’s been just clutching him close and trembling for a few too many seconds. 

Lee pulls back, and Gaara doesn’t need his jinchuuriki senses to know that Lee is crying. Fat, round tears are spilling down his cheeks and soaking the already sweat-wrecked pillow. 

“I’m not upset,” Lee says quickly. “I’m just—” He hiccups, gasps out a sob. “—I’m so _happy_. It’s like my body can’t hold it.” 

Gaara knows a little something about feelings that are too massive for a body to contain, because several of them are warring within him just now, all jockeying for the forefront of his mind. It feels as though his chest could split apart, cracked open right down the sternum, and all the emotions Lee has placed within him could come spilling out at any moment. 

He pulls Lee’s face down to his and kisses both his damp eyelids. 

“I understand,” he whispers, and he thinks it must be true.

One wall away, there’s a crackle of tiny chakra, then the sound of a baby starting to fuss and cry. The monitor on the bedside table, next to Lee’s genin team photo, begins to whistle.

Lee sits up abruptly, casting around for something to clean himself with and finally settling on the corner of the bedsheet.

“I have to go get him.” He grabs Gaara’s hand and squeezes. “But, please don’t go just yet.” 

Gaara frowns, but he squeezes Lee’s hand back. He can’t imagine anywhere he’d rather be than in Lee’s warm bed, surrounded by the scent of him. 

He rolls onto his back and nestles in against Lee’s thin pillow. 

“I’ll be here,” he says, as Metal’s cries grow louder and Lee hurries into his underpants. 

“Good.” Lee shoots him a grin over his shoulder from the doorway. “I hoped you would be.”

* * *

Gaara hasn’t moved when Lee comes back. 

He probably couldn’t have even if he wanted to. Every muscle of his body is deliciously wrung out, too tired to even wipe himself off properly. He feels as though he could sleep another ten hours, maybe even longer if he could convince Lee to hold him like that again. He’s just been lying very still, half-dreaming, half-listening to Lee’s lullaby sounds through the wall. He tried to keep his eyes open and wait for Lee’s return, but his eyes kept drifting to the grinning face of Gai-sensei on the poster at the foot of the bed. He can’t help but find that smile slightly judgmental, now. With his eyes closed, it’s easier to feel unselfconscious about lying naked on Lee’s bed. 

Gaara raises one eyelid lazily as Lee crosses the room. He has a burp cloth over one shoulder and a dusting of baby powder in his hair. 

“You’re still awake?” Lee whispers. 

“Mmm,” Gaara grunts agreeably. He pats the mattress beside him and scoots over just a hair to make room for Lee. 

Lee sits tentatively just on the edge of the mattress. He resists when Gaara grabs one oblique and tries to pull him down. 

“We still need to talk about this.” Lee’s voice is very quiet, very tender. Still holding the hints of a sleeptime song. 

They do. Gaara knows they do. There’s much to discuss. Logistics. Emotions. … His hand slips to the bulge of Lee’s scarred wrist and pulls once more. Apologies. 

“In the morning,” he agrees. He skates his hand up to Lee’s elbow and tries to put a little pressure there. 

Lee doesn’t budge, studying Gaara’s face. Gaara has no idea what he might be looking for, but he must find it, because he finally lets Gaara tug him down to lay beside him, heads on opposite corners of the single thin pillow. 

“Will you hold me like that again?” Gaara asks.

Lee props up on an elbow. He seems to hesitate. Gaara supposes he might offer an explanation, if Lee needs more convincing. 

“It felt … safe.” 

Lee’s mouth drops open. His face softens. 

“Of course.” He lies back down and rolls Gaara over as if his body weighs nothing, tugs him right into alignment and puts him where he needs to go. 

That evokes certain challenging feelings that Gaara suspects he’ll need to grapple with by the light of day. But for now, Lee wraps an arm around his waist and squeezes him tight, and Gaara goes boneless against him. Never in his life has he felt so relaxed. 

“I just have one more question,” Lee murmurs.

“Lee,” Gaara warns. 

“Am I a more agreeable bedmate than Kankuro?” 

Gaara drifts off to sleep to Lee’s giggle getting lost in the tangles of his hair.


End file.
